Goblin Slayer Episode 7

Onward Unto Death

It’s time for another Goblin Slayer episode review, and this week’s episode was pretty good. It was a bit more “artistic” than the other episodes we’ve seen so far, and I have mixed feelings about that, but I’ll go into more depth about that later on.

Blondes in the Bath

The episode opens with a scene of the Priestess in a public bath alone. Apparently the rest of the adventurers don’t bathe, because they all had better things to do. Goblin Slayer had to send a letter, the Lizardman needed to eat cheese, and the Dwarf and High Elf had something else to do which I forget.

You would think that after messing around in the sewers all day long that bathing would be a higher priority for them, especially since there’s a pristine bath waiting for them, but that isn’t the case. But, while the other adventurers don’t join the Priestess in the bath, the Sword Maiden does.

From her talk with the Priestess we learn a few more things about her and her background. Her body is covered in scars which she says she got due to a mistake she made, and it’s implied later on that they’re the result of a goblin attack.

Last week I mentioned that the Sword Maiden could probably clear the goblins out of the sewers with only minimal help, but this could be the reason she hasn’t done so. She also cryptically mentions to the Priestess that although he’s reliable now, Goblin Slayer won’t always be around.

Perhaps this is hinting towards something else in her past. Maybe she too thought she was safe due to a party member, but once that party member suddenly disappeared, she realized how defenseless she truly was. This could again be tied into how she came to get all those scars.

Maybe the mistake she was referring to was the mistake of trusting that person to always be around to protect her. Not only does this serve as some potential backstory for the Sword Maiden and why she ceased being an adventurer, but it also serves to foreshadow events later in the episode.

The final thing I want to mention about the dialogue between the Sword Maiden and Priestess is that the Sword Maiden refers to her eyes and says that they have seen many things. Does this mean she’s actually not blind? Or is she simply referring to before she went blind?

If it’s the former, then it makes me wonder what the cloth over her eyes is for. If the latter, then was her blindness also the result of the goblin attack that left her body scarred? I can’t wait to learn more about her background.

Back to the Sewers

Upon meeting up to go back into the sewers, Goblin Slayer is seen carrying a canary in a cage to use as a poison gas alarm. He noticed that there were no quests to kill giant rats in the town’s sewers, despite the sewer system being so large. This seems to have been what hinted to him that the goblins are using gas to clear out their home.

When the High Elf asks what it is he’s carrying, implying that she doesn’t understand why he has a canary, Goblin Slayer responds to her question literally by asking if she knows what a bird is. Great roast, Goblin Slayer, that should shut her up for a few minutes.

The party eventually make it to a sealed room, and upon busting the door open, they find what appears to be a woman who was captured by the goblins. However, while this may have been how she originally came to be here, upon further inspection it’s apparent that she has been dead for a very long time.

It seems that the goblins, or at least whoever or whatever is leading them, have set this now skeleton of a woman in this room as bait for a trap. The doors seal behind the party, and poison gas starts seeping in through cracks in the walls.

Luckily for everyone, Goblin Slayer is not only a professional at slaying goblins, but also at gathering random information which may be helpful in his goblin-slaying adventures. Since he had already assumed poison gas would be used against them, he passes out makeshift gas masks to everyone.

He then breaks out some concrete making materials and instructs the Dwarf to use them to seal up the holes in the walls from which the gas is leaking in. Once this is done, the gas slowly dissipates inside the room (I guess through the door), and some of the goblins outside succumb to it.

I wonder if the Priestess and High Elf will change their minds about Goblin Slayer’s use of poison against goblins now that the goblins have attempted to use poison against them.

The party then prepare for the incoming goblin hordes which Goblin Slayer predicts will come through the door once they believe the gas to have dissipated completely. They move a large, stone coffin in front of the door to block it somewhat, but even this doesn’t last long once the attack begins.

Alongside the hordes of goblins which break through the door comes a goblin champion. Last week I felt that the leader of the goblins in the sewer might be another ogre, or even a hobgoblin, but I had forgotten that goblin champions were a thing.

If I’m remembering correctly, Goblin Slayer once said that goblin champions are the goblin equivalent of a Platinum adventurer, but this goblin champion doesn’t really seem to be all that powerful. I’d say he’s more like a Gold adventurer considering the ogre was stronger.

Goblin Slayer slaying goblins

During this fight we get the first of the artistic scenes I mentioned at the beginning of this post. The Priestess is using her divine protection, the High Elf and Dwarf are fighting at range from behind it, and the Lizardman, his dragon tooth warrior, and Goblin Slayer are fighting on the front lines.

That alone isn’t anything particularly special, but there are a number of shots which make full use of the 3D rendering which is sometimes showcased in this series. In particular, we get shots like the one pictured above, in which the camera rotates around Goblin Slayer as he takes out groups of goblins in slow motion.

I actually thought that this looked pretty good and was a nice use of the technology available to the animation studio. I’m not as pleased with them when they use mediocre CG to animate Goblin Slayer himself, but this showed that the technology can at least be put to good use.

The Fate of Particular Adventurers 2.0

The battle is going fairly well for our merry band of adventurers, that is, until Goblin Slayer charges the goblin champion and is subsequently swatted like a fly. It’s almost like he didn’t learn anything from his fight against the ogre, but then again, he probably shredded that memory since it didn’t pertain to goblins.

Goblin Slayer being taken out of the fight is essentially the same as when the swordsman from episode 1 hit his sword against the ceiling of the cave and the Priestess’ original party fell into chaos. Except, this time Goblin Slayer isn’t around to save them.

Shocked by the defeat of Goblin Slayer, the Priestess can’t hold her protective barrier up any longer and so the goblin hordes break through. While the Lizardman and Dwarf continue to fight, the High Elf gets overrun by goblins which begin tearing at her clothes.

I’m not sure if I ever brought this up in any of the previous episode reviews, particularly that of episode 1, but perhaps the goblins immediately attempt to rape women because that’s how they breed. We’ve seen male and children goblins, but no female goblins yet.

Perhaps there are no female goblins and so the goblins simply use the females of the other races to reproduce. This would make sense based on what we’ve seen so far, and would explain their primeval instincts when they come across female adventurers.

Meanwhile, the goblin champion moves in on the Priestess. Interestingly, he doesn’t seem to be thrown into a crazed frenzy by the instinct to breed as the rest of the goblins do. It seems more like he either sees the Priestess as a source of food, or he’s simply going in for the kill.

The goblin champion then bites what I thought was her collar, but turns out to be her arm. With all hope lost, the Priestess’ eyes have turned cold and she believes this is how her party is going to meet their end. But, wait! Goblin Slayer is back on his feet!

That’s right, after seeing the Priestess in distress, Goblin Slayer is reminded of how he was unable to do anything to protect his sister when she was being attacked by goblins, and refuses to let that happen again. As he hobbles over to the goblin champion, he takes the hair from the skeleton which had been in the room to use as a weapon.

Just as he learned about using canaries as poison gas alarms and charcoal as a gas mask material from miners, he seems to have learned a trick of the trade from an assassin at some point as well. Using the hair as a rope, he chokes the goblin champion after jumping onto its back.

However, he’s not strong enough to kill it in this way considering how much damage he’s already taken, and so he resorts to gauging out one of its eyes. Wounded, the goblin champion retreats and the rest of the goblins follow suit after Goblin Slayer threatens them with a similar fate.

I should mention at this point that I don’t believe the goblin champion was the true leader of these sewer goblins. He didn’t seem to possess the same level of intelligence as the ogre, and I have a hard time believing he’s the mastermind behind what’s going on under Water Town.

The Priestess’ wounds are then tended to by the Lizardman, and as she wakes up, Goblin Slayer collapses with blood dripping out of the grates on his helmet. And, this is where the second artistic scene comes in.

After he collapses, the camera zooms out above him and then changes to a shot of the canary, still in its cage. Then, for the next 80 seconds we see a nearly still frame of Goblin Slayer on the ground with his comrades around him reflected off the eye of the canary.

There’s still the movement of fire, the blinking of the canary’s eye, and a sheen going across the canary’s eye, but other than that, everything is still as we listen to somber music. I get that this scene was supposed to let what happened to Goblin Slayer sink in and make us feel like he’s dead, but it went on for a bit too long if you ask me.

And, that’s saying something considering I’m a fan of the elevator scene in Neon Genesis Evangelion which is literally a still frame with near-silence for almost 60 seconds. The two differences between that scene and the one at the end of this episode of Goblin Slayer are that we actually learn a lot about the characters from that scene in NGE, and this scene in Goblin Slayer was over 20 seconds longer.

I’m all for doing things in unique and artistic ways to elicit specific emotions from the viewers or to illustrate things instead of explicitly telling the audience, but this scene was a bit much. I would have rather had some unrelated scene of the Farm Girl after the first 20 seconds.

Conclusion

So what did you think of this week’s episode of Goblin Slayer? Did you find the opening bath scene as interesting as I did, or did you simply see it as fan service? Did you like the artistic scenes such as the reflection off the canary’s eye at the end? And, do you think Goblin Slayer is dead? Let me know in the comments.

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